Christmas Eve, 2013: Brother, Here We Go Again!

It is the culmination ( and, thank God, the end ) of the most important event on the Christian calendar: the Christmas shopping season, known by retailers as the "Golden Quarter."

The huge national retail chains continually remind us, the consumers, that big sales during the "Golden Quarter" will make or break them. This is to make us feel sorry for the multi-millionaires who own such companies, and make it almost patriotic for consumers to go into debt to bolster our economy and make the rich even richer.

"God rest ye, merry merchants, may you make the yuletide pay!"

And they do. At least the big chain stores do.

This is reinforced by the fact they sell foreign-made products, made in third-world countries for slave-labor wages, sold by shop clerks who aren't paid a living wage and are forced to work longer hours during the "Joyous Season" so that multi-millionaires can reap even greater profits.

The smaller, local retailers don't do nearly as well.

The "Golden Quarter" now begins in August to better appeal to that most basic human need: greed.

Consumers are inundated with all sorts of advertisements, all saying the same thing: to be a better spouse, parent or lover you must buy lots of gifts. You must prove yourself by maxing out your credit cards.

"Angels we have heard on high, telling us 'Go out and buy!'"

Of course, most of us buy into that propaganda. We are willing co-conspirators in our own de-humanization...and bankruptcy.

Children, in particular, buy into this. They find getting lots of junk is an adequate substitute for parental love and affection.

Fortunately, our affluent society has an abundance of expensive psychiatirsts to which their parents can later send them when they start mis-behaving, using the excuse that their parents never really loved them.

For poorer people who commit criminal acts, they get only court appointed shrinks to tell their sad tales to, about how bad their childhood was.

Even newspapers get into the act. They sell tons of advertising space to the national retailers to boost their declining revenues. At the same time they post stories and editorials about how people have lost the "true meaning of Christmas," about how commercial Christmas has become!

"Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, advertising wondrous things!"

Even the greeting card industry gets into the act. How dare you not buy hundreds of Christmas cards ( not the cheap, dollar store variety, either ) to send out to people you barely know, rarely see, and really can't stand? You don't want them to send you a card and you not return one, do you?

Most of us have already been invited into people's homes with Christmas trees that have been beautifully decorated with expensive ornaments and strung with electric lights, with mountains of wrapped Christmas presents piled around them.

"See how many presents we have to buy!"

I am not sure if they want me to pity them or admire them. I merely hope that they included a gift receipt with their present, to make returning most of those gifts easier on the recipient the day after Christmas, when they get to see how much their gifts really cost!

Of course, a Christmas tree has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, anyway. It was originally a pagan Germanic custom that somehow got co-opted by Christians somewhere along the line.

Even the arbitrary choice of December 25 for Christmas Day is rooted in paganism: it was the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, which featured feasting, drinking and orgies. The early Christians probably hoped the Romans were so busy partying that they wouldn't notice them.

There are tens of millions of people throughout the world, starving in war-torn countries, that won't be celebrating Christmas. Survival there is a means unto itself. And they haven't got any money to buy junk, anyway.

There are millions of Americans who are pretty much in the same boat.

In A Charlie Brown Christmas, Lucy van Pelt states that Christmas is run by a big, eastern syndicate.

She was largely accurate.

Because Christmas is about none of the above.

Christmas is to celebrate the birthday of a Jewish male child named Jesus ( which is the Greek version of "Joshua" ) in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago.

Jesus preached a revolutionary philosophy that changed the course of history: that salvation was open to all. Jesus spoke of one God, of peace, love and universal brotherhood. Things were unimportant; so were rank and power.

Most so-called "Christians" pay only lip service to that.

It certainly has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas shopping, spending beyond one's means and dressing up pine trees. All of that can be very nice, but that is not the point.

The "true meaning of Christmas" will not be found in many homes across the world tomorrow. It will probably found in all of the missions and homeless shelters throughout the United States. Those were the people to whom Jesus preached, to whom He offered hope.

Tonight is Christmas Eve.

Hopefully, some people will strain to remind themselves what it is all about, what it supposed to be about, NOT what we have made it. At least for a few minutes.

For the others, good luck on thinking that something you bought at a store will buy you life everlasting...or anything everlasting.